


like gold fall the leaves in the wind

by elrohir



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-War of the Ring, The Choice of Luthien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-16 05:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18514828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrohir/pseuds/elrohir
Summary: What a strange thing it was, the anathema of a deathless creature dying.---Written for the 2019 Twilight and Shadow Lord of the Rings fanzine.





	like gold fall the leaves in the wind

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the absolutely beautiful LoTR fanzine Twilight and Shadow, which you can download as a free PDF at lotr-zine.tumblr.com. The ending of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen has always haunted me, and so I wanted to explore it from Arwen's perspective. Please enjoy!

The marble doors of Haudh-en-Elessar swung open on invisible, silent hinges.

Her breath caught. Aragorn lay radiant before her, the wisdom and valor of his long years lining his face with dignity, not decrepitude. She moved to stand by his side. Enerdhil’s Elessar gleamed green and glassy on his chest; she trailed her fingertips past the jewel to clutch at his hand.

“Stay with me, Tinúviel,” said he, “just a little while.”

His strong voice betrayed nothing of his age, its rich timbre unchanged from the golden summers of their early days. That his youth seemed yet so vibrant in him worsened the empty ache of the sunken hollow in her stomach. If he were withered and frail, it would be easier, perhaps, to accept the inevitable end which lay before him. Either way, no craft made by flesh could deliver the spirit of a man from the Doom of his kind.

Her Doom too, now. She knelt by his side. Her husband’s firm fingers intertwined themselves with her own, but the creeping shadow on her heart tightened its grip. Darkness like spider’s-legs crawled down the walls of the ancient house in Rath Dínen.

“Lúthien’s choice, a Gift—such pretty words for so cruel a thing,” said she.

“Nay, not cruel, Lady Evenstar. Merciful.”

He smiled, squeezing her fingers. The creases around his eyes crinkled. “Our Age has ended. Of the Dúnedain of Númenor, I am the last, and of the Elder Days in Middle-earth, only you, Elrond’s daughter, remain. Eldarion shall take his place as the king of the dawn of Men.”

Eldarion.

Adaniel and Annuwen, her perfect daughters, and Eldarion— _Eldarion_ —now King, scion of Beren and Lúthien’s antediluvian union. The children of their years of bliss, now full-grown, with the whole of an untried world before them.

Children of a time where her father’s people were fairy stories and the Dark Lord in the East only legend. The empty silence out of Imladris and Mordor was the same.

“I cannot lose you,” she said, voice a raspy whisper. Her throat burned as she blinked back tears. She held onto Aragorn’s hand as if he would vanish if she let it go.

“Beloved, do not despair,” he said. “My long years are come to their end, but who can discern what the One has in store for his Secondborn? We will meet again beyond the walls of this world!”

The Elfstone glittered as he spoke, and she shivered at his words.

_Six-score years ago. Joy swelled in her chest as she beheld Aragorn crowned, her husband, her life, now King of Gondor and Arnor Reunited, the crown of his sires gracing his head. Resplendent. No power of evil, she thought, her heart racing within her, could stand against such a giant of a man._

_His grey eyes, exhilarated and unguarded, only for her._ Here shall we abide, together, until the ending of the world _, his gaze seemed to say, needing no speech to convey what lay between them._

Aragorn’s chest shuddered and he coughed violently. Jolted back to the present, her eyes widened in alarm.

“For you I forsook ten thousand centuries,” she said. “Do not leave me yet.”

He turned his face towards her, mere inches from her own. His breath fluttered on her nose.

“The call of my forefathers is beyond my power to resist,” he said. He raised a hand to wipe gently at her tears, though his fingers shook, and she leaned into his touch.

“It is my time,” he murmured, “though this hard hour cleaves at my heart.”

Her throat clenched and she bit back a sob. “The Powers themselves cannot sunder me from your side.”

“Light of my heart,” said he. “Death is not our final end!”

She kissed him for the last time, mouth warm under hers, bittersweet like tart grapes.

_For him_ , she realized, _did I choose. For him, and no other._

Now, perhaps for the first time, she understood Lúthien.

Her husband’s eyes fell closed, and it seemed the room dimmed around her. She knew his eyes would not open again, so she spoke instead.

“I love you more than my own life,” she whispered. “Aman or no, my choice is you in a heartbeat, every time.”

His hand squeezed hers in answer as his last breath left him.  She gripped his hands until the strength went out of them, and then let go.

_I love you at the cost of my own life._

The light within her snuffed out. She shut the bone-white door of Aragorn’s tomb behind her and did not look back.

…

The hollow trees of what was once Caras Galadhon clutched the ground with gnarled roots, dismal with a chill winter as she had never seen it before. Her bare feet sunk into the wet earth where drips from pale mallorn-leaves pooled and swirled the soil. Her grandmother said that flowers sprang up where Lúthien walked, but her descendant knew she was not so fortunate. No nightingale sang in these dead woods.

She fingered Barahir’s ring on her hand. Almost two-hundred years she had worn it, the ancient legacy of Aragorn’s mortal line entwined with her own immortal heritage. The Elfstone of her house passed away with its name-bearer, and so too would his ring with her.

She looked through the murk of the trees to the distant hill, framed by scraggy mallorn-branches. The golden wood of her childhood, heady with Galadriel’s primeval magic and the intoxicating glitter of the Undying West, had dissolved into the discolored fog of memory. Once, the mallorn-trunks grew silver like her mother’s hair, starlight caught between the strands. Now, their luster had tarnished into a dull grey. The dead forest of her mother’s people seemed as tomblike as the Silent Street where her husband now slept among his sires.

_“We’ll meet again in the West,” murmured her mother, lips smiling against her forehead. The salt-tinged air blew through her star-strewn hair; Eldamar’s own silver strands, scattered with jewels, seemed a pale thing in comparison._

The forest grasped at the edges of her vision with skeletal fingers. She knew that Celebrían’s ravaged mind found healing now in Lórien’s slumbering gardens across the Sea, but this Lórien had lost its light. The weary tatters of the Eldar had faded into the West a lifetime ago.

What a strange thing it was, the anathema of a deathless creature dying.

“Forgive me,” she gasped, the harshness of her voice in the wood’s rotting silence ringing almost painfully in her ears, “Your daughter’s choice was that of Lúthien.”

A cold numbness crept up her legs, but she forced herself forward. Cerin Amroth grew closer, now, and her doom with it. She did not have much time.

The serpent-eyes of Barahir’s ring glinted green on her hand, and she recalled the words of her troth in Caras Galadhon a lifetime ago.

_I will cleave to you, Dúnadan, and turn from the Twilight._

She laid herself on the clay-cold crest of Cerin Amroth, the black grass coarse with splintered frost. Her soul longed for the halls from which it had been barred, and her spirit searched for the Straight Road, but could not find it; she drifted, lost on a path she had walked a thousand times before.

_Even Elessar had his end. And so must Evenstar!_

The last mallorn-leaves sighed and caressed her still form; her heart beat in the earth. The twilight of her mind gave way to shadow’s embrace, and she breathed no more.


End file.
